NASCAR, in full National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, sanctioning body for stock-car racing in North America, founded in 1948 in Daytona Beach, Fla., and responsible for making stock-car racing a widely popular sport in the United States by the turn of the 21st century.

Drivers competing in the Daytona 500, February 15, 2009.

Geoff Burke/Getty Images for NASCAR

Integral to NASCAR’s founding in the late 1940s was Bill France, an auto mechanic and sometime race-car driver. France had organized stock-car races in Florida throughout the 1930s and ’40s, and, after several unsuccessful attempts to create a series of races that would determine a national champion, in 1947 he created the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC), a yearlong series of 40 races held across the southeastern United States. France was responsible for establishing and enforcing the technical regulations that governed the cars; creating a scoring system that would award drivers points used to determine a series champion; organizing and promoting each race; and awarding cash prizes to the winners of races and to the series champion. These would become NASCAR’s primary tasks as a sanctioning body.

Although the NCSCC was successful, France had greater ambitions. He convened a series of meetings in December 1947 in Daytona Beach attended by racetrack owners and race-car owners and drivers and intended to establish a still-larger stock-car-racing series. What emerged from those meetings was NASCAR, which replaced the NCSCC. France was its first president. The first race sanctioned by NASCAR was held on Jan. 4, 1948, at Pompano Beach, Fla. In February of that year NASCAR was incorporated, with France the primary stockholder.

In 1949 NASCAR changed the rules governing the cars: whereas in 1948 “modifieds”—cars varying in age and in the mechanical modifications made to them for the purpose of racing—were allowed to compete, from June 1949 only late-model (recently manufactured) stock cars were permitted. Races that year were called Strictly Stock races, and Red Byron became the series champion.

France changed the name of the series to Grand National in 1950, a name used until 1971, when the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds bought sponsorship rights to the series and renamed it the Winston Cup Series (it was also known as the Cup Series or NASCAR Cup Series). By then, stock cars had become purpose-built race cars; NASCAR’s rules required cars to resemble their stock counterparts in their dimensions and appearance, but car owners, drivers, and mechanics increasingly exploited those rules in their attempts to gain a competitive advantage. NASCAR was also responsible for mandatingsafety equipment in cars that, by 1970, had reached over 200 miles (320 km) per hour in nonrace conditions.

In the 1970s there was an influx of corporate advertising, which was both a function of and spur to NASCAR’s growing national profile. NASCAR itself underwent a number of changes, with France stepping down as president in 1972 in favour of Bill France, Jr., his son. After years of experimenting with the number of points awarded for each race, NASCAR in 1975 imposed a scoring system that remained in place until 2004, thereby inaugurating the “modern era” of the Cup Series. The 1970s were dominated by Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough, who between them won eight championships from 1971 to 1980.

In the 1980s Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt emerged as the most prominent drivers in the Cup Series. The sport continued to expand, and in 1984 Ronald Reagan became the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Cup Series race. In the 1990s Earnhardt won four championships and Jeff Gordon three. In 1994 the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the Indianapolis 500, hosted its first Cup Series race.

Jeff Gordon (24) leading a group of cars into a turn in the Subway Fresh Fit 600 at Phoenix …

In February 2001 Earnhardt, one of the sport’s best-known drivers, was killed in a last-lap crash during the Daytona 500. Driver safety became a high-profile concern, and NASCAR implemented a number of measures intended to increase safety, including the requirement that drivers use head-and-neck restraint devices to prevent injury and the installation of “soft walls”—steel-and-foam barriers, intended to dissipate the energy of a crash—at racetracks. NASCAR also began development of a race car called the “car of tomorrow,” designed in part to provide the driver with greater protection during a crash; it was used in about half of the races during the 2007 season and was adopted for the full season in 2008.

Other changes to the Cup Series during the first decade of the 21st century included Brian France’s being named his father’s successor as head of NASCAR in 2003 and experimentation with several scoring systems intended to increase competition at the end of the season. The building of new racetracks outside Chicago and Kansas City, Kan., continued efforts begun by NASCAR in the 1990s to expand beyond the southeast United States, its traditional base. After the phone company Nextel announced it would succeed R.J. Reynolds as the series sponsor, the Winston Cup Series was renamed in 2004 the Nextel Cup Series. In 2008 the series name changed again, to the Sprint Cup Series, to reflect Nextel’s merger with Sprint, another telephone service provider. In 2007 the Japanese automaker Toyota entered the Cup Series, traditionally dominated by American manufacturers such as Chevrolet (seeGeneral Motors Corporation) and Ford. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Jimmie Johnson had emerged as the dominant driver in the Cup Series; in 2009 he became the first driver to win four consecutive series championships.

In addition to overseeing the Cup Series, NASCAR sanctions two major national series: the Nationwide Series (founded in 1982 and called the Busch Series 1984–2007), in which race cars that differ somewhat in engine and body size from Cup cars are used, and the Camping World Truck Series (founded as the Super Truck Series in 1995 and called the Craftsman Truck Series 1996–2008), in which race cars with bodies that mimic pickup trucks are used. NASCAR also sanctions a number of regional series in the United States. NASCAR’s headquarters are in Daytona Beach.